Tuesday, 30 December 2014

Eternity captured in a glass. Bubbles, rising, long lasting,
forever, a chain forging links between the beer and the drinker; eternal as
long as the beer remains in the glass. In the city, in the day, in which I drank this beer,
the streets around the Basilica were striped with cheerful anarchy, chaos with
a soulful grin, ice cream and coffee, spliffs and sausages, sitting on steps,
the act against authority, the nimble mind of revolution, skipping from stone
to stone, crossing with ease the river of wine that this city is most often
associated with. But back to the beer that is forever in the glass, drunk to
the accompaniment of the scrape of a chair leg on the floor by the bar, the bow
across the violin, the tuning up before a performance; a reverentially splashed glass of bock (though
I could have had an IPA but I chose to drink different). And outside after the day had dropped its head and as I drank
this eternal glass of beer the snow began to fall, the streets cheered and then
cleared, but for this moment and forever more I had this glass of beer.

Thursday, 18 December 2014

Is there someone out there who is angry that Founders has
allowed San Miguel to buy a 30% share in their business? Is there anyone out
there who is miffed a corporation that makes a series of beers best drank
Arctic-cold on the beach in Malaga has bought 30% of Founders? Is there anyone out there who is chewing the craft beer carpet and frothing at the mouth
with righteous self-importance?

I don’t doubt there is. If you boil down the geek into a fan
and then envisage them as an individual you have actually met rather than
relying on stereotypes; if you remember a fan of beer that you have met, an
engaging man or woman, someone whose company is pleasing and pleasant until the
subject that they are most interested in comes up for air — with others it
might be football, steam trains, military uniforms, Komodo dragons or fracking
but here we are talking about beer and it will be a subject that once aired
becomes an obsession and a passion and a dressage to get them through the day —
then you will have a photo-fit of the fan, of the person who might be angry
that Founders has sold 30% of its business to Sam Miguel.

On the other hand, I wonder if those with a healthy interest
in beer (or maybe even an unhealthy interest) are beginning to get used to such collaborations, beginning to see it
as normal aspect of a business growing up; understanding that there is a need
for an outfit such as Founders to get an injection of cash under the right
conditions. Some fans, especially those who go dewy-eyed at the thought of
exchanging a few words with a head brewer whilst bagging a one-off brewed with
echinacea or whatever, might feel let down in the spirit of fan ownership, but
I reckon the majority of people who drink Founders beers will continue to drink
their beers.

For an intriguing aside to fan worship of brewers see Tomme Arthur’s column in November’s AAB.

Wednesday, 10 December 2014

So what influence does the landscape have on this brewery’s
beers and the way it carries out its business? How has this land, this flat,
featureless, tree-shy landscape been prevalent in the brewers’ collective minds
when it came to creating their beers and shaping their pub estate’s planning?
In a train carriage I sat, having left Wainfleet, where the aromatics of the
morning brew drifted over the platform as if saying farewell, looking onto the
flatness of this part of eastern Lincolnshire, a land some might call
monotonous, but I find beautiful in the bleak, seemingly barren face it
presents to the world. It’s a land of endless horizons; a land stitched with
channels of water; a land flattened with vast, dark ploughed, shorn stalked
fields, clumps of trees and in the distance, the pillars of church towers and
the collected colonies of compact villages.

I think of communities hidden away in valleys, enclosed in
by mountains, and imagine that this location keeps minds and currents of
thought equally closed. Then I think of this part of east Lincolnshire, in
which Bateman’s Brewery has its home, and wonder if the wide open spaces
engenders a sense of freedom and a Marco Polo-like need to explore; or
conversely, could it breed a need to pull up the drawbridge, to shake a fist at
the world and venture into this same world, prickly and pumping up the volume
as the beers are introduced into this world.

Of course, the landscape, if it does influence the way
Bateman’s views the world, this landscape is just one feature that helps in
their direction: the beer market, the beers the brewers drink and read about,
the market trends and the customers’ preferences in Bateman’s pubs (of which
there are 60 or so I am told and once there was one in Bethnal Green, but like
Carthage it is no more) all have an input in the way Bateman’s passes through
this world.

After a day spent in the company of Jaclyn and Stuart
Bateman, engaged in a tour and time spent looking around the brewery, tasting
the beers and gleaning scraps of information from head brewer Martin Cullimore,
I’m inclined to think Marco Polo rather than an inclination to pull up the
drawbridge. As Stuart Bateman and I investigate a bottle of the barley wine BBB
that was brewed in 1975 and then match it with the 2013 Vintage, whose added
ingredient included time well spent in a port barrel, we talk beer, brewing,
touch on trends, discuss American hops (the brewery were using them in 2003 or
even earlier I seem to remember), future beers, a multiplicity of ingredients
(black pepper, dried orange skin, cocoa nibs), key kegs (this is booming for
them) and fermentation. The BBB has spent 39 summers in this dark bottle, it
was a beer that Bateman’s finished brewing in 1975 because demand was
descending, but at the time some cases were put away for Stuart Bateman’s 18th
birthday in 1978 and then these cases were promptly forgot about until 2010.
The beer has aged well, it gleams in the glass with its sleek chestnut-burgundy
tones; there’s a sherry-like character on the palate, flighty, light,
sprightly, joined by sultanas, raisins, and a touch of alcoholic fire. The 2013
Vintage, whose recipe is the same as BBB’s, is rich and bracing, port-like,
nutty, chocolaty and a solemn foil to its ancient cousin.

But let us not forget the workaday beers, the beers that
Martin Cullimore and his team produce day in day out: XB, XXXB, Salem Porter
and so on. A glass of the session beer XB has a sweetness mid palate and a
ring, a chime of jelly-like fruitiness, a delicacy, movement seen out of the
corner of the eye, a brush from a feather before its dry sardonic finish. It’s
not a boldly flavoured, vividly hopped beer — instead, it’s balanced and
ineffable in its attraction. And so in the Red Lion out in the countryside,
this flat featureless countryside between Boston and Wainfleet, I sit in a pub
that has the feel of a large, comfortable front room, furnished with
blanquettes, tables and chairs and comfortable sofas, while in the adjoining
restaurant over 40 people have gathered to drink a wake to one of their own,
and I drink XB with Jaclyn Bateman and think of how much character goes into this
glass of beer. And later on, after a night spent carousing with Bateman’s
people at the brewery’s Visitor Centre, this home to old brewery artefacts,
ancient brewing books and a massive collection of bottled beers, I now start to
wonder what influence people have the way Bateman’s conduct their business and
brew their beers.

People, landscape, trends, traditions, tastes: so many
influences on the way a brewery goes its way in the world; and I’m still
seeking the answers to my questions.

I was invited to the brewery, ate lunch, drank beer and
slept it all off in one of the brewery cottages; such is life.

In this cider pub there is the smell of a dozen ciders
slumbering in their boxes, a sweaty, vinegary, sour, wine-like, pungent,
otherworldly, half-pleasing, half-repulsive aroma, cheese-like, Parmesan
perhaps, the relic of decay in the air allied to the dereliction of daytime
duty that drinking cider in this ambience of insolence implies. I order a beer.

Tuesday, 9 December 2014

What does a drunkard sound like? He or she might be
incredibly fine in the way the words are chosen, but these same words will
betray their state of inebriation: beautiful and gracious make their
bows but the presence of phrases such as so clean and oh fuck no presage a descent, a ladder on which the language slides down, untidy,
apocalyptic, like a town drunk tumbling down a hill, comical, Laurel &
Hardy, Norman Wisdom (and then it becomes sinister when we hear the poke of the
aluminium walking stick with its rubber stopper as its keeper Long-John-Silvers
their way about the floor).

But on the other hand, let us hear another drunken person,
the need to explain Nietzsche, the neediness of the enervated would-be
intellectual, the expert on the Hungarian revolution, the rock critic yet to
emerge from their shell; the rocking horse too and fro of outlandish opinion
that always ends up in a cul-de-sac of the mind; another aspect of the drunkard,
the splurge of words, the urge and surge of words that sometimes make sense but
more often than not don’t make sense.

So what does this mean to beer, what does this mean to those
who drink beer? You can get drunk, merry, smashed, wasted and wanton on beer;
beer is not special, beer is not sparing of those that fill their mouths and
bellies with its slow flow of sweet, bitter, luscious, sensual, bracing
moments; beer like wine like gin like methylated spirits gets you drunk, is no respecter of
traditions or trends, is and can be a berserker on the battlefield.

I have been drunk, you might have been drunk, you might have
thrown words about with the abandonment of a child at a kids’ party who decides
that the red Smarties have to die, but to look on the bright side of life it’s
a state of change, a mission impossible, a missive to the world that the order
of things has been upturned, that you are drunk. And that change of things,
that revolutionary nature of being, that darkness made visible can be good, a
disordering of the senses as some French bloke once wrote.

And then there comes a time like tomorrow, for we are
talking about tomorrow, the drunk will be changed, reversed into sobriety,
uninterested in Nietzsche, tumbledown Dick no longer, clean and sober and as happy
as the eternal Larry.

Thursday, 4 December 2014

This is a glass of Christmas Ale, Harveys’ Christmas Ale, as
taken in a small measure in the sampling room at the brewery. This is a glass
of the powerful, spicy, smooth, sweet, vanilla-almond, nutty, fiery Christmas
Ale, which I enjoyed in the company of Harveys’ Miles Jenner, one of the most
elegant and urbane brewers I know. The beer is potent and its potential for
making me sleep after Christmas lunch is leviathan-like. Outside, while we
drink the beer, the men and the women of the brewery are at work: checking the
boil, maintaining the fermentation (and look at that lovely rocky head that
signals the ascent of Harveys’ Best Bitter, one of the greatest expressions of
this English beer style that I know), clanging barrels together after they’ve
been steam-cleaned, directing nozzles into barrels in the racking room, the
quotidian work of a brewery that those who reason brewing is a romance
forget about. But then there is a certain romance in a vision of the tower brewery,
designed by William Bradford, the same guy who brought Hook Norton to life in
the 19th century; there is a certain romance in Jenner’s insistence
on sticking to UK hops and the more local the better; there is a certain romance in the
nature of the brewing liquor, a hard water that comes from two onsite brewery
wells and there is definitely a romance in the idea of the rain falling on the
South Downs within which Lewes sits and this rain taking 30 years to percolate
through the ground and become the liquid that Harveys draws up for its beers;
there is a certain romance about the copper-faced mash-tun from 1954 (bought at
an auction after its former owners from Croydon closed); there is even a
certain romance about the dome-like copper, which puts me in mind of Jules
Verne and 10,000 Leagues beneath the Sea; there is also a certain romance about
the story behind the yeast strain that Harveys use, a strain that arrived on
the train from John Smith in the 1950s thanks to a brewing chemist on his hols
who said that said variety was a good ’un and, which even though it has mutated
and mutated over the decades, visitors from the north still pick up what they
say is a Yorkshire character on the beers that Harveys brew; and yes there is a
romance about the Russian Imperial Stout that Harveys brew, a romance in the
three hour boil (as opposed to 75 minutes for their other beers) and certainly
a romance in that this beer is going to be aged in wooden barrels supplied by a
Portuguese and Crimean wine-makers. So for this moment or two let us remember
the romance that exists in brewing as well as the day-to-day work that makes
the brewing of beer possible.